My first school was the pioneer Kindergarten of America, established and taught by Miss Elizabeth Peabody, in a house on Pinckney Street, near the corner of Joy Street. Miss Peabody was an enthusiastic follower of Froebel, and did much to introduce his system of education into this country. My fellow pupils were many, but I only remember Kitty Alger and Frankie Watson, later the distinguished surgeon, Doctor Francis Sedgwick Watson. We sat on tiny chairs, around a fascinating low table, where we modeled birds’ nests in clay and filled the nests with tiny eggs. Another useful art was the weaving of patterns with narrow strips of colored paper. My first lessons in arithmetic were had at the Kindergarten, with the help of a frame strung with red, green, and yellow beads. The system by which addition and subtraction were taught has passed from my mind, but the pleasure of juggling with the pretty colored balls remains. My sister Flossie, trying to help me with my arithmetic, set me a simple sum, using as a textbook “Greenleaf’s Arithmetic.” After a stormy argument, the ink bottle was hurled against the nursery wall, with the passionate exclamation: “Greenleaf is a liar!” On leaving Miss Peabody’s Kindergarten, I went to Mr. Henry Williams’ school in Temple Place. The entrance was extremely mysterious to me. To reach the classrooms, we passed through a paved inclosed court and up a long flight of stairs, to a shadowy corridor that always depressed me. I was not exactly afraid of it, as of the passage outside my room inhabited by the foxes, nor did any hairy beast lurk there, as under the staircase at Number 13 Chestnut Street, but it was uncanny and I took care not to pass in or out alone. I remember little of what I learned at the Temple Place School but a deal about Mr. Williams, a commanding figure, in spite of such personal defects, as a lump on his forehead and a missing forefinger. He had a musical voice and a sort of masterful sweetness that won the heart of every child. On Sundays he led the singing at the “Indiana Place Chapel”, the first home of the Church of the Disciples, where my mother’s beloved friend, James Freeman Clarke, was the pastor. The older girls were taught by Mr. Williams, but I was in the primary department, presided over by Miss Paul, a little lady who looked more like a brown wren than a schoolma’am. For me, the school of schools was the Hilliards’ at Number 113 Mount Vernon Street, kept by Miss Julia and Miss Miriam Hilliard. Their mother, one understood, had met with “reverses.” Whatever their nature, they had left her dependent on her daughters. Mrs. Hilliard was super-stately, remote, kindly, and painstaking in her dealings with us. She wore stupendous corkscrew ringlets that must have taken hours every morning to arrange. She gave me music lessons. Half-past nine found me in the Hilliard “best parlor”, seated on an embroidered revolving stool before the square piano, with the metronome tick-tacking beside me.